It is well known that in the early stages of life for a mammal, mother's milk is the ideal source of nutrition. In the livestock industry, calves that are raised for veal and for herd replacement commonly are weaned from colostrum-rich cow's milk to a nutrient-rich milk replacer within a few days following birth. Animals having monogastric digestion are frequently fed milk or a milk substitute during their early life. Unfortunately for many young mammals, whether by tragedy or by economic necessity, as in the case of animals whose milk is commercially valuable, mother's milk is not always available. In these instances, the use of a milk replacing composition is required. Milk replacers are intended to replace whole milk and thus to provide an economic alternative to whole milk in the raising of the young animal.
Research has been ongoing for many years in an effort to determine how calves respond to various food ingredients and to formulate milk replacers to respond to the nutritive needs of pre-ruminants. A summary of milk replacer research reported in Trevor Tomkins, Sowinski, J. and Drackley, J. K., New Developments in Milk Replacers for Pre-Ruminants, 55th Minnesota Nutrition Conference & Roche Technical Symposium, 1994, pp. 71-82. This paper notes, on page 72, that the nutrient requirements of the calf are not well understood in relation to our understanding of the nutrient requirements of the young of other species. D. C. Church, Digestive Physiology and Nutrition of Ruminants, Church, Dept. of Animal Science, Oregon State Univ., 1972, Vol. 3, p. 122 reports that calf scours (diarrhea) has continued to be a problem with calves, and that although whole milk produces good calves, the protein to energy ratio may be too high for maximum weight. It has also been reported that weight gains of calves to eight weeks of age were increased by adding 3% cream or an equivalent amount of energy from glucose to 3.5% butterfat milk. J. H. B. Roy, The Calf Nutrition and Health, Penn. State Univ. Press, p. 100, reported that in France, a comparison of liquid diets containing 2.3-6.9% glucose and 0.5-3.5% fat showed that the highest weight gains were obtained when the highest concentration of glucose and of fat was used. Although retention of nitrogen was highest at the highest level of glucose, diarrhea was more frequent; this finding led to the recommendation that milk substitutes should contain not more than 2-3% glucose and a fat content of 2.5-3.5%. It has been reported that when more than 500 grams of lactose or glucose are given daily, there is a tendency for the calf to have diarrhea.
There exist many formulations for foodstuffs for neo-natal animals that incorporate dried milk products and vitamin and mineral supplements. The common feature of these prior art compositions is that they derive most of their protein content from a milk source ingredient such as skim milk, buttermilk, whole whey, delactosed whey, casein, milk albumin, and/or whey protein concentrate. Milk source ingredients are used extensively in traditional milk replacers because the existing health data relating to young mammals fed milk replacer diets based on non-milk source ingredients is poor. That is, animals fed with prior art milk replacers having protein sources other than milk proteins are known to suffer from protein deficiencies that can potentially result in debilitating illnesses. This data suggests that only milk-based milk replacers can be used to obtain a healthy young animal.
In the case of dairy calves, the susceptibility to disease is an acute and persistent problem and manifests itself most frequently in the form of a disease known as “scours” or diarrhea. Calf scours causes more financial loss to herdsmen than any other disease-related problem they encounter. Because the problem of scours is so prevalent, many attempts have been made to formulate a feed supplement that minimizes the incidence of scours. These previous efforts include, among others, the addition of pre-gelatinized starch, optimizing the ratio of casein to whey proteins, forming soluble gels of dairy by-products, and using treated legumes to form protein and starch digestion products from which a feed may be manufactured.
Conventional milk-based replacers suffer from a number of drawbacks. However one such drawback relates to the high cost of milk source ingredients. This cost issue presents the conundrum that, while milk replacer compositions are designed to obviate the need for milk in those cases when the mother's milk is commercially important, the milk replacer composition still must use some amount of milk products in order to keep a young animal healthy.
Often, these above problems are addressed through the development of variety of milk replacer compositions. Indian Patent Application No. 1278/MUM/2006 discloses a milk Replacer formulation for calves comprising of a mixture of cereals and their by-products, oil seed extraction residues, milk substitute, sources of fat, palatability enhancers, mineral nutrients, antibiotics, vitamins, growth promoters and preservatives. One calf milk replacer described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,128,167 include, as ingredients, dried milk, dried whey, dried whey protein concentrate, dextrose, and various vitamins and minerals. U.S. Pat. No. 4,614,653 discloses an improved flowable milk replacer concentrate having good shelf stability and ready reconstitutability is provided for the feeding of monograstic animals, this concentrate can be readily reconstituted to provide a milk replacer. U.S. Pat. No. 5,756,132 disclose milk replacers employed in feeding very young calves to increase the rate of weight gain. It has been reported that calves undergo a surprising rate of weight gain when fed a milk replacer that contains both dextrose and brewers yeast. The invention disclosed in WO 0048474 relates to calf milk replacer compositions, containing substantially no skimmed milk powder, and comprise: vegetable protein concentrate or isolate and a carbohydrate source comprising 10-90% processed starch and 90-10% maltodextrin, together with whey powder and/or delactosed whey powder and/or whey protein concentrate, fat and additives. U.S. Pat. No. 6,096,353 disclose a composition useful as a protein source for a milk replacer in animal feed. The composition consists of a combination of hydrolyzed soya proteins and hydrolyzed wheat gluten. The improved milk replacer composition and dry feed compositions for young mammals are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,541,047 which employ a high quality inedible egg product to minimize or eliminate the need for milk source ingredients or plasma-enhanced food compositions. The U.S. Pat. No. 4,961,934 discloses milk replacer composition comprises a skim milk powder and/or a soybean meal as a main component, and at least 0.5% by weight of a triglyceride of a medium-chain fatty acid having from 6 to 10 carbon atoms and which is effective to prevent or reduce the incidence of scours and the death rate of infant cattle. JP 57-186445 discloses a milk replacer composition for a calf which comprises the skim milk powder as a principal component with calcium gluconate, and nutrient material, e.g. dried whey, fat or oil, saccharide, animal or vegetable raw material, vitamin or mineral. The milk replacer composition disclosed in JP10-084868 highlights the importance of production method of composition in which any separation of fat and oil is not caused and which has excellent stability and good digestibility and absorbability and does not cause diarrhea by spraying a mixture of fat and oil, lecithin and a polyoxyethylene glycerol fatty ester on a powdery raw material consisting of milk components and granulating the resulting material into granules.
The above existing compositions act as milk replacer composition in feeding the young calf but do not help in overall development of the calf to early complete functional maturity. Further they provide only some relief from the scours problem, but do not eliminate it, nor do they work particularly well to put weight on the young calves. However, these prior art products does not provide the necessary growth factors for young calf. As well, once a calf on a prior art diet gets scours, the farmer will have to administer expensive antibiotics and/or feed supplements that may or may not save the calfs life. These prior art compositions therefore leave significant room for improvement of these compositions with natural components as alternatives.
So there is no existence of the milk replacer composition, which contain medicinal herbs and which address both the problems of overall development of calf to early complete functional maturity by nourishment and prevention of infections such as scours. Hence the present inventor aim is to address the above problems without undesired side effects by developing the herbal milk replacer compositions mainly comprising:                a) medicinal herbs,        b) protein and fat sources,        c) chelated minerals and mineral mixture which are used in functional foods, and        d) vitamins.        
The herbal revolution and its implementation to daily nutrient intake or function food/dietary supplements with desired therapeutic efficacy led the world populations great interest in the herbal compositions. This ultimately led to researchers to develop them in functional food and nutraceuticals and finally to develop marketable products. Functional foods are substances that provide health benefits beyond the normal nutritional values and nutrients added, which are not naturally occurring in that food is called as functional fortified food. The plants are the major source among the Indian masses, since most important foods of mankind as these are not only nutritive but are also sometimes indispensable for the maintenance of health.
It would be desirable to more widely employ natural agents such as herbal mixtures in order to benefit from their safe and beneficial activity. In particular, it would be desirable to use natural agents to induce a more rapid response from herbal medicines by stimulating their beneficial action. The desirability of a combination of natural agents would be dependent, however, upon the continued absence of adverse side effects.
To achieve the foregoing and other objects and in accordance with, the purpose of the present invention, as embodied and broadly described herein, the compositions and process of preparation thereof.